Thursday, August 18, 2016

Twitter is taking another step forward in ensuring that its service is a safe place to be. The company today announced that it’s giving everyone access to its quality filter, which automatically screens out tweets from suspicious accounts and hopefully will minimize or eliminate abuse from taking place on the platform.

Users will also now have the ability to limit which notifications they receive across both mobile and the web.

During the company’s second quarter earnings call, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey responded to complaints around harassment, bullying, and abuse that seemed to be running rampant on the service. He acknowledged that Twitter hadn’t done enough, but promised that it was working on not only improving enforcement of its policies, but also developing new technological solutions to combat the hate.

The launch of this feature to everyone comes on the heels of a critical report by BuzzFeed alleging a lack of concern Twitter has displayed toward harassment. The company has since responded to the article claiming that it’s not factual and “We are going to continue our work on making Twitter a safer place.”

As for notifications, you can now select to receive notifications from just those you follow.

The thing is, if you just mind your business and simply mute or block anyone you don't want to see, there isn't a problem. I give people two chances to demonstrate they've got something substantive to say, and once I determine that they're too stupid or too argumentative to bother, I mute them and move on.

So, given that it's already quite easy to avoid any significant or persistent unpleasantries, what Twitter is trying to do is effectively impossible. They're trying to make it a place that will feel sufficiently safe to users who are going out of their way to interact with people they don't know while avoiding any criticism from them.

People have been asking about Big Fork. It's going well. Figure an announcement within 5 weeks.

My experiment with a twitter like system in which all messages are encrypted (so there is no way to filter them on the server, or even decrypt them easily) is working, but way too slow to be used given my resources.

It is interesting though. Merging this with a decentralised setup would work pretty well.

Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Del Harvey, struggles with how to allow criticism but curb abuse. “Categorically to say that all content you don’t like receiving is harassment would be such a broad brush it wouldn’t leave us much content,” she says. Harvey is not her real name, which she gave up long ago when she became a professional troll, posing as underage girls (and occasionally boys) to entrap pedophiles as an administrator for the website Perverted-Justice and later for NBC’s To Catch a Predator. Citing the role of Twitter during the Arab Spring, she says that anonymity has given voice to the oppressed, but that women and minorities are more vulnerable to attacks by the anonymous.

It's almost like certain ethnic groups coordinate things in the media. The line that women and minorities are the most vulnerable literally did make me laugh out loud. The best was the on line writer who decided to go back to television scripts to avoid comment sections, though. The communists are beyond parody now that they are oblivious to how ridiculous they are.

Prediction: Twitter will be the equivalent of Myspace within two years.

Speaking of politics and websites, I see Space of AIDS' own Ace is doing his crypto-nevertrump thing harder than ever now. Including flat out saying that after this election he's going to suck up to Democrats to try and destroy the GOP, because now it's about survival. And to Ace, survival means you bob your head on the lap of whoever's in charge at the moment.

The guy's been playing the 'I kinda-sorta support Trump but this latest news, you guys, it's SO bad, we have to face it you guys, Trump's sunk' card from the moment he realized Trump had tons of support on the right. Little surprise the word 'cuck' is banned on his site.

"Right now there are hundreds of journalists and reporters who are deliberately misleading the public about the upcoming 2016 Presidential Election, as the recent DNC leaks show. I’d like to begin the operation by exposing 250 of them who are trying to swing the election in Hillary’s favor by showing a clear neglect and bias for truth towards Donald Trump. I hope we can accomplish this goal by September 26, the date of the first debate. The process has been started by creating pages on these four journalists: ...."

Sounds like a lot of overlap with the SJW list and perhaps the Big Fork. Could they be merged or coordinated? I'd like to see frequent reminders about these lists' existence on alt-right and game sites, stories about new additions to the lists, outrages by listed SJWs and media whores, etc.

journalists and reporters who are deliberately misleading the public about the upcoming 2016 Presidential Election, as the recent DNC leaks

If ROOSH exposes them we can put out flyers in mexican at the Home Depots near where they live saying they keep tons of cash in a hidden safe. When the journalists stop by for rough trade they will get beaten up.

I suggest with the Big Fork, if two people are 'tweeting' back and forth and both have more than a certain # of followers, monetizing! a) broadcast to the margin of the platform that two famous people are in arguing in real-time over [something contentious] b) run an ad, in the clickthru

They're trying to make it a place that will feel sufficiently safe to users who are going out of their way to interact with people they don't know while avoiding any criticism from them.

Good, succinct summary. SJWs go out of their way to find people to scream about. I suspect they won't even react well to this, and I'd bet a finger that it won't take long before someone to equate this move with 'If you don't want to get raped, don't wear that'.

"I want to preach my leftist echo chamber DNC platform bravery every day, to everyone-whether they asked for it or not-without being harrassed by all these hateful, alt-right, racist, misogynist, xeno-/islamo-/trans-/homophobic, gamergate white supremacist MRA rapists who disagree with me."

I feel vindicated in my deep, instinctive, irrational distrust of Twatter. However, I feel the same way about pretty much all social media (except some message boards and blog comment sections), so I can't rule out stopped-clock syndrome.

Geez what a way to run a company. We have to shut down all speech that hurts feels because Buzzfeed. BUZZFEED. Which is a complete joke to 98% of the entire freaking internet. How hard is it to block people? No it's not really about their hurt feelings it's that they demand anyone who doesn't submit and comply with the delusional assed narrative be shut down and silenced.